Sinking ship?

Are ministers Chris Evans and Nicola Roxon bailing out because they know the ALP will soon be opposition for six to nine years, a state of existence they have experienced before thank you very much and feel no need to again?

Despite their protestations at this morning’s press conference, the likely election result must come into their thinking.

But it’s hardly the point, unless you happen to have particular faith in the pair’s psephological prowess. They have no better idea of the upcoming election result than you or I do. We all know the polls, internal and external, are bad for the Gillard government.

Last night’s announcements provide a short-term “stench of death” narrative, but that’s just a few days headlines.

It shouldn’t influence our expectation of the government’s chances of survival at this year’s election.

Two developments make the government’s situation appear less terminal today than the middle of last year. One is the introduction of the carbon price in July 2012. It means the next election will no longer be a referendum on introducing it, but a referendum on taking it away.

What’s done is done and elections are about what happens tomorrow and the day after. Recognising the different dynamic between voting about something that’s going to happen and one that has happened already is not rocket science. It was always anticipatable (see for example here and here) yet Tony Abbott remains unable to extricate himself from it.

The second development is in Julia Gillard finally, belatedly, getting the incumbency/authority thing. It took a couple of years, but she got there.

[Update: I means she “gets” as in “understands”, not that she now “has” it.]

She now seems to understand governments are re-elected not because they’re liked, or the prime minister shares each and every of the voter’s values, but because they’re the known quantity, the safe option.

Governments say to voters: we’re the ones doing the governing, the serious stuff; the other side plays games.

Her realisation may have come too late. Perceptions might already be ingrained. Or maybe not.

Unfortunately, there’s another hurdle the government has to clear.

It’s perceptions of the economic competence, the debt and deficit story. The Howard government ran $20 billion-odd surpluses and the Rudd and Gillard governments turned them into $50 billion deficits (the current financial year is no longer projected to be a surplus, but a smaller deficit).

Grownups understand that the biggest reason for the turnaround, the global financial crisis, was beyond the government’s control. Their timing, arriving in office just before the meltdown, was dreadful luck.

Even if we were to accept (bending over backwards to accommodate government critics) that tens of billions of dollars were wasted, there is little difference, politically, between a $20 billion deficit and a $50 billion one. Both, and the consequent accumulated debt, are astronomical figures to the average person.

If last year’s deficit were $20 billion instead of $50 billion the opposition’s narrative, Barnaby Joyce’s various metaphors, would still be virtually as effective.

From the very beginning, the government has been woeful at putting its economic case. Tongue-tied. But that’s not the worst of it.

The killer is Treasurer Wayne Swan. It is his public persona. Swan looks nervous and shifty, as if he’s hiding something. He never seems to believe what he’s saying. This is the man in charge of the country’s finances.

There is no point complaining that it’s not fair, that Australia was the only developed country to remain out of recession and the government should get some credit. Don’t tell me, tell the voters.

Better still, tell the government.

We (still) live in the television political age, and Swan was not made for television.

There are internal political reasons why Swan is in Treasury, but he’s not there for his public political skills. His occupation of the position is an indulgence no government could afford.

Roxon and Evans have left the ministry, but tragically for the government, the Treasurer will remain.

Debt, deficits and Wayne Swan will all but guarantee a Coalition victory in 2013.

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Peter Brent

Peter Brent started Mumble in 2001; the old site can be found at http://mumble.com.au. He mainly goes on about the numbers in electoral behaviour and voters' motivations that drive them. In 2009 he finished a PhD in political science which dealt with electoral administration, a topic he also sometimes goes on about. You can follow him on Twitter at @mumbletwits.